


Dare Not to Sleep

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, I Tried, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Loneliness, Post-Canon, Two Minds One Body, Warg Sansa Stark, Writer's Block
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 23:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19451617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: Some nights, if he's lucky enough, Jon can imagine being back in the godswood, under the rustling branches and blood-red leaves of the heartree.Not this night.He can still perceive the illusion. In the dim light of the tent, with the dawn filtering through the opening, the silhouette of Nymeria, lying next to him, has been transformed into the thread-like body of a woman dressed in gray. He dreamed of tracing the outline of her cheeks, of her forehead, the thin arches of her eyebrows.(Almost every Stark has wolf dreams in the books. Why not Sansa? Now that she's not running. Now that she has a crown on her head and a crown of thorns around her heart. What other way has she to see what she lost?)





	Dare Not to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> The truth. When you have a writer's block and to overcome it you throw yourself on the most complex idea for the deep pleasure of making things more difficult, failing miserably. Argh!

Leaving is harder than usual this time.

Be the one to leave him has always been, more than it has ever been to let him go. (It is easier to respect a choice, however painful, when you are not the one to take it. It is easier to manage frustration, guilt and abandonment than the chasm tearing you from the inside.)

This time it requires every bit of strength that she owns. It seems to her that someone is ripping her soul into pieces.

The woman inside the direwolf turns round. From the rocky hill, she looks one last time at the plain below, the fire in front of the tent. A man keeps the flames, stirring the embers. A man with black hair and eyes that reflect a past dead and gone, lost in the ashes of what has been and will no longer be. 

_Brother_ , the direwolf calls him and in her howl echoes the pain for other brothers and a sister killed by the brutal greed of the beast that walks on two legs.

The woman who lives in the shadow of her conscience has another name for the man. She remembers his gentle hands on her fur. How she rubbed her snout against the pale scars on his face, the only kisses she will ever give him. She remembers his deep voice, when the night before he told her of a woman kissed by fire, queen of a kingdom of snow and stone.

 _Mine_ , her woman's heart screams under Nymeria's fur. _Love. Mine_.

Her paws rattle the frozen ground. They shudder to run back to the camp. Howewer other words, words that even the direwolf understands, hold both back. Duty. Pack.

With one last harrowing howl, the direwolf and the woman run away in the cold winter night.

*

"She is gone?"

Jon nods. The echo of the last howl has been extinguished for some time, but it still resounds in his ears like a thunder.

He keeps sharpening the sword. Some nights, if he's lucky enough, Jon can imagine being back in the godswood, under the rustling branches and blood-red leaves of the heartree.

Not this night.

He can still perceive the illusion. In the dim light of the tent, with the dawn filtering through the opening, the silhouette of Nymeria, lying next to him, has been transformed into the thread-like body of a woman dressed in gray. He dreamed of tracing the outline of her cheeks, of her forehead, the thin arches of her eyebrows.

Tormund sits next to him. "A wolf," he says, rubbing his cheek.

"A direwolf," he corrects him. "Nymeria."

"How much did she stay this time?"

Too little. He stares at his hands reddened by the cold, the chapped skin on his knuckles and backs. He puts the sword into the ground and rub his palms, giving them an appearance of warmth.

"One night," he says.

After provoking a commotion in the camp with her appearance, Nymeria remained at the edge of the forest. When Jon came out of the tent, attracted by the shouts, he saw her turn her head towards him, sniffing the air as if she had recognized his smell, in the golden eyes of amber and honey a mourning so deep and human that shook him right into his bones.

"You know they won't stop talking about it. As long as it were just birds and crows... but now a damn wolf. They start to be curious."

Small brown birds with soft plumage appearing from nowhere to settle on his shoulder. Squirrels that threw acorns from tree branches onto him. Hibernating animals awakened from their dreams to live someone else's.

Tormund's doubts are the same that plague him. At the same time they annoy him. They force him to accept the thorny nature of a problem he is not yet ready to face. To do so would mean giving up the comfort that she brings with her whenever she presents herself in a new form, to what she represents: the mirage of home, the warmth of family, the desperation of a tormenting peace.

It was not the war, after all, that snatched away what was dearest to him, but its end. His peace was the price for others peace. Knowing it sometimes makes him feel as though fire and ice ran under his skin instead of blood.

"I thought everyone minded his own business."

"That's why you have me here and no one else," Tormund says. For a moment his blue eyes, penetrating and severe, are so similar to hers that he has to look away. "You're one of us now, but things like this remind them that you're different from most of us, there was a time when you haven't been. You're a crow and a free man, but you've been a king, a wolf."

 _Thanks the gods, I was never a dragon,_ he thinks.

"What do you want me to do?" Jon asks sharply. "That I chase her away? Do you think I didn't try? She has always been stubborn, never listening. No matter what I do or say, she'd come back anyway."

She knows when I lie. The direwolf smells it. The birds ruffle the feathers. The crows tilt their heads to one side and peck at his fingers with rage.

Tormund puts his hand on his arm. "This cage you chose," he says, "is not life."

He knows. "It's the only one I've ever known."

Tormund stares at him for a long time, then runs his hand over his beard. The disappointment in his eyes hurts him like it would have happened with the father who is not his father or Robb.

"I was wrong. After all you are not one of us. We call ourselves free folk for a reason."

*

Sansa wakes up with a start. She had never tasted such bitter hope before dreaming.

In the letter that arrived the day after she dreamed of flying for the first time, Bran called them wolf dreams. He wrote her a story of blood magic, of vivid images like memories of another life. He explained that with time and experience they could become more than just dreams. She could enter the minds of men and animals, see through their eyes, control their actions.

The thought is frightening, like every new and strange thing, every responsibility.

In her solar, while reading the notes taken by Maester Wolkan during the morning petitions, Sansa crumbles an almond cake, taking a piece of it in her mouth. The crumbly taste of the sugar melts on the tip of her tongue, but when she begins to chew an almond she jolts.

 _Bones, muscle, pieces of raw meat torn by bites from the carcass of a deer_. Nymeria.

Sansa feels bile invade her throat, her nostrils. She runs to the basin where she usually rinses her face. She throws up until in the end a sour taste has replaced that ferrous of blood.

Shaking from head to toe, she cleans her mouth with the back of the hand. She sits by the fire and takes her head in her hands.

Part of her doesn't want to sleep, another part doesn't want to do anything else but fly.

The sensation of the wind when it shifts, the continuous movement of the wings in the icy chill, the breadth of the world seen from above, the sharp outline of the mountains, the thrill of emptiness around her.

She closes her eyes and when she opens them again it's because Beth is shaking her frantically.

"Your grace," she says and she has that expression again.

"Don't look at me like that."

Beth stares at her. The curly hair is a coppery halo around her pointed face. She must have noticed the basin. It was stupid. She should have emptied it.

"I'm going to call Maester Wolkan."

"It isn't necessary," she replies.

"Your grace -"

 _"Sansa,"_ she interrupts her firmly. "How many times do I have to tell you? We grew up together. Call me Sansa."

She doesn't expect her to understand. How she needs it. Beth represents one of the few ties to her childhood. A reminder of what her life was like before the war. She is a queen. She loves the North and will always defend it, but there are moments when she almost regrets the little girl who no longer exists, however stupid and naive she was. There are times when she would like to be only Sansa again. The weight of the crown, she feels it even when she is not wearing it.

"You're not well."

"Nothing that a decoction cannot cure," she says and resists the urge to massage her temples in a circular motion.

"You don't sleep. You barely touch your food." Beth raises her chin, a challenge to contradict her. "These dreams-" she hesitates slightly. She obviously doesn't know how to define them. When Sansa first spoke of them to her, she remembers how Beth tried to hide her dismay. Months have passed since then and the uncertainty has been blunted in quiet acceptance. "They are consuming you. You are exhausted. They are changing you."

Has she truly changed?

The sheer agony of every awakening when solitude encircles her in a steely grip, the bewilderment when she rips her mind from Nymeria's, as if she were taking off the very fine peel of a grape.

 _What do you want that you don't have?_ One of her many ghost asks her.

Her family. The embrace of a kind man. Her sister's wry smile. The wisdom of her brother in the flesh and not through parchment and ink.

She is losing herself. She must put a stop to this madness, contain the risk and there is only one way to do it.

"Bring me Maester Wolkan. I need to send a raven."

There is someone who can advise her. A trustworthy person with whom her secret will be safe.

She crosses Beth's curious gaze and with a wolf's smile, showing her bare teeth, says, "I intend to summon Meera Reed."

*

The goldfinch is an almost imperceptible weight on his hand. The tiny and red-apple head rubs against his forefinger.

Jon smiles and the shining black eyes that watch him reflects that smile, like a secret to be shared, a weight against his heart, pleasantly heavy.

 _Look at me_ , it seems to say. _What do you see? Do you know me? Do you know what I'm willing to do to see you? To see you..._

To which he would like to answer: _do you think I wouldn't recognize you? Whatever shape you may assume, whether your skin are feathers or furs, whatever colors you wear, you stay yourself. That look in your eyes and the way you look at me, how my body reacts when you're close to me_.

The goldfinch suddenly flaps its wings and returns to being simply a bird. He notices the change the instant it happens.

He sees it fly away until it becomes a tiny point in the sky and it stings as always, every time a little more.

He squeezes his empty hand in a fist and licks his lips. "I miss you too."

**Author's Note:**

> Dare Not to Sleep  
> by Arnulf Øverland
> 
> I was awakened one morning, by the quaintest of dreams  
> ‘twas like a voice, spoken to me  
> It sounded afar - like an underground stream,  
> I rose and said: Why do you call me?
> 
> Dare not to slumber! Dare not to sleep!  
> Dare not believe, it was merely a dream!  
> Yore I was judged.  
> The gallows were built in the court this evening,  
> They’ll come for me—5 in the morning
> 
> This dungeon is teeming,  
> And barracks stand dungeon by dungeon  
> we lie here, awaiting, in cold cells of stone,  
> We lie here, we rot, in these murky holes.
> 
> We know not ourselves, what does lie ahead  
> Who will be the next one they’ll reach for.  
> We moan and we shriek: But do you take heed?  
> Is there none among you who’ll hearken?
> 
> No one can see us,  
> None know what befalls us.  
> Yet more:  
> None will believe–what the day will bring us!
> 
> And then You defy: This dare not be true!  
> That men can be utterly evil.  
> There has to be some one with merits pure  
> Oh, brother, you still have a great deal to learn
> 
> They said: You will give your life, if commanded  
> We’ve given it now, for naught it was handed  
> The world has forgotten, we’ve all been deceived  
> Dare not to sleep in this hour–this eve


End file.
